Delaware students can now choose their own race (Yes, RACE!) under new regulations.

[Final-Fan]

o_O.Q said:

Final-Fan said:

1.  So what is the point of calling penguin flippers "evolved wings" when they are really just "evolved legs"?  Sure, penguin flippers used to be wings.  They used to be a lot of things.  They're not actually wings anymore. 

3.  I thought the analogy was pretty fucking clear but let me try to spell it out further. 

Presume that the elephant and the fish have a common ancestor.  Since the process of evolution depends on the gradual accumulation of small changes over a large number of generations, if we go back and back in time the elephant's ancestors eventually start to look a little bit more like the fish's ancestors.  Eventually you get to the common ancestor and they are the same population of creature. 

The question for you is, if there are strict natural groupings dividing all creatures including creatures that lived in the past, where do you draw the line between elephants and fish and elephant-ancestors and fish-ancestors when there is a continuum of infinitesimally different, almost identical, creatures connecting them? 

P.S.  "there is a continuum of infinitesimally different, almost identical, creatures" color spectrum analogy "there is a continuum of infinitesimally different, almost identical, colors"

"Sure, penguin flippers used to be wings.  They used to be a lot of things.  They're not actually wings anymore.  "

didn't you just agree with me that they are adapted wings?

" Since the process of evolution depends on the gradual accumulation of small changes over a large number of generations, if we go back and back in time the elephant's ancestors eventually start to look a little bit more like the fish's ancestors."

which is not relevant to discussions about the animals in the present day... so what's your point?

" I thought the analogy was pretty fucking clear"

the fact that they have a common ancestor millions of years ago is completely irrelevant to the fact that here in the present day we can tell that there is a clear division between the two groups of animals

"where do you draw the line between elephants and fish and elephant-ancestors and fish-ancestors when there is a continuum of infinitesimally different, almost identical, creatures connecting them?"

i expected better to be honest

1.  I agreed that they adapted FROM wings INTO flippers.  They are not, in their present state of evolution, wings.  I don't see why we shouldn't either call them legs (by your logic, since the wings were just evolved legs) or flippers (by my logic, since they used to be wings, and used to be legs before that, but now are more properly called flippers). 

2.  "i expected better to be honest"
I'm afraid I can't really say the same.  But I was hoping you would surprise me. 

I will make one more attempt to see if you are trolling by dumbing the logic down to an elementary school level that any minimally intelligent person who is not willfully ignorant and/or flat out lying should be able to follow.  You don't strike me as a clinically retarded person so here we go: 
a.  I grant your point that in the present day there is no living continuum of creatures leading gradualistically from elephants to fish. 
b.  You seem to have granted my point that when considering both the present and the past, including the very distant past, there has been a living continuum of creatures leading gradualistically from elephants to fish (via a common ancestor in the past).  If you do not grant this point then you should have fucking said something a long time ago, but feel free to correct your error now. 
c.  Since there is a continuum of creatures, each infinitesimally different from the next, connecting elephants to fish, where you see the natural, strict group distinctions separating one creature from another infinitesimally different one, separating mother from child even?  The fact that they are differentiable today does not mean that there is not a connection between them in the past, and the separation was never sudden by human standards.  If it appears that way to you I maintain that it is an illusion courtesy of the blurring hand of millions of years. 

I dumbed down the logic but I still used big-people words, so let me know if you need help with the vocabulary. 

Another analogy:  Where do you draw the line between the atmosphere and outer space?  The sky doesn't have a clean-cut ceiling.  The International Space Station experiences orbital decay because although it is outside what most people think of as the atmosphere there is still a very small amount of air even that high up.  Not enough to cause short term problems, so they just deal with it instead of pushing the whole thing to a much higher orbit.